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Saturday, December 31, 2011

In recent days, Ron Paul has tried to distance himself from damaging newsletters from the late 1980s and 1990s by attributing racist and anti-gay statements to ghost writers and disavowing the most incendiary sentiments. “It wasn’t a reflection of my views at all…I think it was terrible,” Paul said of the letters, which blamed AIDS on the gay community and likened black people to criminals. “It was tragic, and I had some responsibility for it, because the name went out in my letter. But I was not an editor. I (was) like a publisher.”

That’s how much the National Rifle Association raised last yearthrough a complex mix of corporate partnerships, merchandizing, membership dues and anti-Obama fear mongering. A separate but affiliated organization, the NRA Foundation, distributed $21.2 million in grants last year — most of it to the NRA itself. Although some portion of the foundation’s grants went to local charitable organizations, there are a number of unexplained discrepancies between what the foundation claims it gave and what that charities indicate they actually received.

The year 2011 brought the most billion-dollar climate disasters to the United States ever, piling history-making events on top of each other to catastrophic results. The litany of disaster included a scorching drought that rivaled the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, a tornado season twice as bad as the great 1974 tornado outbreak, and flooding worse than the the great 1927 flood on the Mississippi River. This year of disaster was the result of the unlimited burning of fossil fuels, which has trapped increasing amounts of heat in the atmosphere, disrupting our climate system.

Notorious Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing increasing fire over his office’s failure to adequately investigate hundreds of sex crimes, including dozens of alleged child molestations. Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has previously gone easy on the sheriff, joined the critics. While he stopped short of calling for Apraio’s resignation, in an interview with 3TV news in Phoenix, McCain said he was “outraged” and “astonished that there hasn’t been more outcry about the failure of these investigations.” Watch it:

Black students are suspended and expelled at much higher rates than white students in Washington, DC and its suburbs, according to a new Washington Post analysis. Last year in Alexandria, Virginia, for example, black students were nearly six times as likely to be suspended as their white peers, while in Montgomery County, Maryland, nearly 6 percent of black students were suspended or expelled last year, compared to just 1.2 percent of white students. Of course, the problem exists in school districts across the country and experts say the disparities are caused by a host of issues, including higher poverty rates among African Americans, “unintended bias, unequal access to highly effective teachers and differences in school leadership styles.” A joint effort by the U.S. Justice and Education departments launched in July to look into reforms of school disciplinary systems.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Last month, there was finally some good news on the jobs front, as the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percentand the economy created 140,000 private sector jobs. However, the continued slow-burning crisis in housingcould easily short-circuit any burgeoning labor market recovery, as the Wall Street Journal detailed today:

Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when theyapproved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed abill repealing the state’s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that herold state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

2011 marked a banner year in the Republican war on woman’s health. Close to 1,000 anti-abortion bills sped through state legislatures as the GOP-led House led a “comprehensive and radical assault” on a federal level. But in surveying their arsenal this year, 10 bills stood out as particularly perturbing and far-reaching efforts to stymie women’s access to abortion services, birth control, and vital health services like breast cancer screenings. Here are ThinkProgress’s nominations for the most extreme attacks on a woman’s right to choose:

Recently, Ron Paul has been subject to intense criticism over controversial newsletters written under his name in the 80s and 90s that frequently included racism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. Over the last few days, Paul has responded that he did not write the newsletters and disavowed their contents, claiming this has been his consistent position for 20 years. Here’s what Paul told CNN on December 21:

North Carolina is one of the few states in the country with public records of who has a permit to carry a concealed firearm, so it provides a rare window into how such permits are handled once their holder’s criminal record proves them unfit to carry a hidden gun. The results are not pretty:

Sunday, December 25, 2011

At Dugsi Academy, a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota, girls wearing traditional Muslim headscarves and flowing ankle-length skirts study Arabic and Somali. The charter school educates “East African children in the Twin Cities,” its website says. Every student is black.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Terror attacks across Nigeria by a radical Muslim sect killed at least 39 people Sunday, with the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.

LONDON — Hackers with the loose-knit movement "Anonymous" claimed on Sunday to have stolen a raft of emails and credit card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising it was just the start of a weeklong, Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Friday, December 23, 2011

In January, San Francisco will officially be the first U.S. city to have a minimum wage of above $10, nearly $3 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. And that won’t be the only locale in which workers will see a little extra pay in 2012. In fact, eight states will be raising their minimum wage next year, which, according to the Economic Policy Institute, will benefit 1.4 million workers:

Though the economy has struggled throughout 2011, one sector that saw some significant improvement was the American auto industry. In fact, about one million more cars are expected to be sold this year than last year, and American automakers are once again claiming a larger share of the American auto market than their foreign competitors:

Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) emergence as the front-runner in the Iowa GOP primary is bringing new scrutiny on Paul’s newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s. The newsletters, published under his name, included contentclaiming that African-Americans are trying to give white people HIV, suggested that Washington, DC is “anti-white and proud of it,” provided instructions on how to murder African-Americans, and warned of “malicious gay(s)” who spread HIV.

The House is expected to pass the two-month payroll tax cut extension today, preventing taxes from increasing for millions of Americans on Jan. 1. The Senate approved the deal Friday morning. House Speaker John Boehner caved under the enormous pressure and dropped his opposition to the extension, telling reporters late Thursday that the House had reached a deal to pass the Senate’s two-month extension deal after minor modifications, according to the Washington Post:

This winter has been unusually warm, crippling ski resorts, ruining holiday traditions, and dashing hopes of a white Christmas across the northern hemisphere. While the billions of tons of greenhouse pollution in our atmosphere sometimes encourage freak snowstorms, the primary effect of global warming on winter is, well, warmer temperatures — making white Christmases less likely. Temperature increases in some regions were off the charts in November, with northern Norway about 10°F warmer than average. In Finland, snow has been replaced by rain, killing World Cup and European Cup ski races, hurting retail sales, and adding to the gloom people feel from the long winter dark. This “black Christmas” shows the “footprint of global warming“:

Monday, December 19, 2011

The 99 Percent Movement effectively changed the American political debate from debt and deficits to income inequality, highlighting the fact that income inequality has increased so much in the U.S. that it is now more unequal than countries like Ivory Coast and Pakistan. While those numbers are startling, a study from two historians suggests that American wealth inequality may actually be worse than it was in Ancient Rome — a society built on slave labor, a defined class structure, and centuries of warfare and conquest.

Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) threw cold water on a temporary extension of the soon-to-expire payroll tax cut that had passed overwhelmingly in the Senate on Friday. “Well, it’s pretty clear that I and our members oppose the Senate bill,” Boehner said, despite the fact that on Friday he had called it a “good deal” and a “victory.”

More than two weeks ago, security researcher Trevor Eckhart posted a video about Carrier IQ, an obscure software installed on approximately 150 million smartphones. The 17-minute video sparked a firestorm not only because it alleged the software logged numerous details about users' activities, but also because it did so without their knowledge.

WASHINGTON -- Entering 2012, President Barack Obama's re-election prospects are essentially a 50-50 proposition, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It found that most Americans say the president deserves to be voted out of office even though they have concerns about the Republican alternatives.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Florida Family Association has managed to do a lot of damage with its All-American Muslim boycott over the last week and a half, whether by convincing companies like Lowe’s and Kayak to absolutely humiliate themselves, or by stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment against the cast of a touching and totally uncontroversial reality show. But fortunately one thing sanctimonious moralizers do well is make lists, and they’ve kept track of advertisers who stuck to their guns and either continued to advertise on the show after the FFA started its campaign.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Congressional leaders last night agreed to a $1 trillion bill to fund the government, averting a shutdown that would have started at midnight tonight. The bill reportedly dropped many of the unrelated policy riders that House Republicans had tried to insert into it.

Poverty in America is only getting worse, with data showing rising income inequality and the startling fact that half of all Americans are now either in poverty or considered low-income. Were it not for the government programs that comprise the social safety net, those numbers would be even worse. More than a quarter would live in povertywithout the safety net, according to one study, and Social Security alone kept 14 million out of poverty last year. Despite that, Congress — and particularly Republicans in Congress — have made cuts to various programsmeant toaidthe poorest Americans.

In September the Ohio Civil Rights Commission ruled that a white landlord, Jamie Hein, had violated the state’s Civil Rights Act by posting a sign by the pool of her duplex that read “Public Swimming Pool, White Only.”

Deck those halls with boughs of apples and top that tree with a finger puppet of Sir Isaac Newton.

At least that's what Robin Zebrowski does at her home in Beloit, Wis., where she and her husband, Joshua, observe the birthday of the great 17th-century English scientist and mathematician, Dec. 25, 1642.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

A study by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that both the number of death sentences meted out and the number of state executionsdeclined in 2011 — developments which the organization says reflect “the growing discomfort that many Americans have with the death penalty”:

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is unquestionably the most notorious law enforcement official in the country, infamous for his ruthless and illegal treatment of the undocumented immigrants under his charge. He’s known for cramming detained immigrants into outdoor “tent cities” he proudlylikens to concentration camps, and for parading prisoners around in pink underwear to humiliate them.

Since the 99 Percent Movement protests began across the country, multiple Republican lawmakers and strategists have announced their fear of what they claim are the movement’s attacks on capitalism and America’s free market economy. The protests and Democratic policies, some Republicans have claimed, represent a form of class warfare against the rich. And many have predicted that supporting the movement will come back to haunt Democrats.

A new study from Congress’ Joint Economic Committee (JEC) debunks the prevailingconservativenotion that Unemployment Insurance (UI) dissuades people from looking for a job. “On the contrary,” the report finds, “beneficiaries of federal UI benefits have spent more time searching for work than those who were ineligible for UI benefits.” “In fact, since Congress enacted federal unemployment benefits, time spent looking for a job has tripled among the long‐term unemployed who are out of work as a result of job loss,” the report adds.

At least 2.5 million younger Americans now have health insurance as a result of a provision in the Affordable Care Act that allows adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans until 26 years of age, the Associated Press reports. The Obama administration is expected to release additional data later this afternoon:

House Republicans passed their version of a payroll tax cut extension last night, but not before adding a litany of spending cuts and changes to federal programs that they knew Democrats would never accept. The GOP, which still refuses to tax a relatively small number of millionaires to give an extra $1,000 a year to the average middle class family, included cuts to Medicare benefits and the Affordable Care Act and froze federal worker pay for an additional two years.

Before the Senate took up its vote on a radical Balanced Budget Amendment proposal today, Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) — a co-sponsor of the bill — called it “one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before the Senate in decades.” Lee is right: the Balanced Budget Amendment he and his Republican colleagues continue to push is important, since it would have tremendous ramifications for an already-struggling American economy, throwing the country back into the depths of recession.

In their zeal to crack down on undocumented immigrants, federal immigration officials have accidentally arrested and tried to deport thousands of U.S. citizens in the past year alone. Americans who find themselves in this nightmarish situation say their protests to the police fall on deaf ears, and they are denied any opportunity to communicate with immigration agents to clarify the situation.

As the media fixates on the partisan battle over renewing the soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, the imminent threat of a government shutdown seems to have been lost in the mix. In addition to the payroll tax bill, Congress is far from finalizing an omnibus spending bill that will prevent the federal government from shutting down in three dayswhen its current round of funding runs out:

The University of Vermont chapter of fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon is beingsuspended for passing out a survey to its members that asked questions including, “If I could rape someone, who would it be?” The university may take further disciplinary action, and women on campus are circulating a petition to have the chapter shutdown entirely that has already received over 1,000 signatures. The incident is the latest in a long series of rape-promoting stunts by fraternity members at American universities. Jezebel notes that “Sigma Phi Epsilon should know the drill, since UVM’s chapter was shut down from 1993-1997 for hazing, which included making pledges tell racist jokes and describe what they’d do with a stripper whose company they enjoyed the night before.”

This past Saturday, tens of thousands of civil rights activists marched on the New York offices of Koch Industries to protest the Koch brothers’ support of restrictive voting laws that disenfranchise millions. In dozens of states, Republican politicians have pushed laws that disproportionately keep Democratic voters, including blacks, Latinos, students, and the poor, from the polls. U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) was among the lawmakers and labor leaders who locked arms and led the march on Madison Avenue. The billionaire Koch brothers help fund the shadowy corporate front groupALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) that has modeled restrictive voting legislation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the month of October saw 4.1 unemployed job seekers for every one available job, as the number of job openings decreased by 110,000 to 3.3 million. That month, the total of unemployed workers reached 13.9 million. As the Economic Policy Institute noted, “the fact that we have had a job-seekers ratio above 4-to-1 for 147 weeks underscores the crucial need for extended unemployment insurance benefits.”

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Under President Obama, the nation’s deficit will shrink to less than $1 trillion in 2012, the Treasury Department announced yesterday. The deficit in 2011 and 2010 was $1.3 trillion. Treasury projects that the budget deficit for fiscal year 2012 will come in at $996 billion. Additionally, as a result of the debt super committee’s failure to reach an agreement, an automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts will kick in over the next decade. Obama has pledged to veto any attempt to curb those cuts.

The Florida Family Association (FFA) has attracted national attention this week for convincing Lowe’s and other companies to drop its advertising on the acclaimed new TLC reality show, All-American Muslim. Claiming a membership of 35,000 individuals, FFA’s only paid staff member is its president, David Caton, and it is not affiliated with any national organizations.

Monday, December 12, 2011

The number two Senate Republican, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R), last week decried attempts by Senate Democrats and President Obama to pay for a payroll tax cut extension with a surtax on millionaires. Despite the fact that payroll tax cut extension would keep an extra $1,000 in the pockets of the average American family, and despite the fact that the millionaire surtax would hit relatively few households, Kyl said he could only support extending the tax cut for working Americans if it was accompanied by massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

Today, Chris Wallace interviews Rick Perry. Remember when people thought he'd be serious contender for the presidency? And then we found out that "Rick Perry" was a Farrelly Brothers movie, and everyone was all, "Oh! He brings me such delight BUT NO." I sure hope the Rick Perry who trips and falls into stacks of pies shows up this morning.

The potential takeover of the city of Detroit by an “emergency manager” under a controversial Michigan law was the topic of the night on MSNBC Thursday, with the Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz shows tackling the topic.

What happens within the black community when the gap widens between the poor and the affluent? That’s one question raised by new census data showing well-off African-Americans leaving cities for the suburbs and the South while the ranks of the black poor grow larger.

Feeling the heat of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren’s lead over Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS unleashed an extremely disingenuous political ad that insinuated Warren was responsible for the 2008 bank bailout — a patently absurd claim given that the bailout was a Republican measure and that Warren was later chosen as the head of a panel providing much-needed oversight to the program. In fact, she has been a consistentadvocate for greater accountability regarding the bailout funds. Warren blasted Rove for the ad, saying, “I can’t find the right words to describe how wrong that is. Factually wrong and morally wrong.” “Karl rove is not telling the truth,” she added. “I think anyone who is not telling the truth shouldn’t be running ads in this race.”

The delegates assembled in Durban, South Africa to tackle the civilizational challenge of manmade climate destruction burst into sustained applause on Thursday when a young American interrupted the proceedings to speak on behalf of the United States people. Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old student from Middlebury College and member of the youth climate delegation, spoke out in the plenary hall as US climate envoy Todd Stern prepared to address the assembled environmental ministers. “I am scared for my future,” she said, because of the “obstructionist Congress” and the “empty rhetoric” of President Obama:

The TLC reality TV show All-American Muslim chronicles the livesof a group of Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan. The show has beenwell-received for its fair and realistic portrayal of the Muslim American experience in the United States. Watch a trailer for the show here.

Republicans, while claiming to support a payroll tax cut extension that will primarily benefit the middle class, have cycled through a list of reasons to oppose proposals from Senate Democrats. The GOP refuses to pay for the cut with a surtax on millionaires, even as the wealthiest Americans’ tax rates have fallen to historic lows. Other GOP members have claimed the extension — which would put an extra $1,000 a year in the average American’s pocket — would undermine Social Security (it wouldn’t).

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board provoked anenormous backlash by airing ads that tell women who are date-raped that they have only themselves and their friends to blame. The ad was part of a $600,000 campaign aimed at curbing excessive drinking.

After hearing from hundreds of rape victims that the ads were extremely upsetting, even traumatizing, the board has decided to pull them:

More and more of America’s wealthy are coming out in support of paying their fair share in taxes. Two dozen millionaires came to Capitol Hill recently simply to say, “tax me.” Now, multiple Grammy Award-winning hip hop artist Jay-Z is joining the chorus. “I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if it went to the things that really mattered,” he told CNN, adding that, if the money goes towards health care, education, and to help people, “most people with a conscience, with some integrity, and moral fiber wouldn’t have any problem paying more taxes.” Watch it:

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin this week in two separate posts smeared CAP and its bloggers as “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Israel.” In her first post highlighting a recent Politico piece — which was originally titled“Liberal think tank harbors Israel haters” but subsequently changed to “Uncovering the anti-Israel enablers” — Rubin, without offering any evidence, said our “views are not merely anti-Israel, they are anti-Semitic” and that our writing is “fiction for Israel haters.” Rubin posted a follow-up story the next day, noting Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow Josh Block’srole in it and added, again without offering any evidence, that CAP bloggers promote “out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech”:

Yesterday, Republicans again shot down an extension of a payroll tax break for middle-class families due to their objection to a 1.9 percent tax increase on thetop 0.2 percent of income earners. Naturally, Republicans are recyclingtheir spurious claim that taxing America’s millionaires will somehow hit small businesses and stifle job creation. “It’s just intuitivethat, you know, if you’re somebody who’s in business and you get hit with a tax increase, it’s going to be that much harder, I think, to make investments that are going to lead to job creation,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD).

Thursday, December 8, 2011

The Senate today is scheduled to vote on the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new agency created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. It’s unlikely, at this point, that Democrats have enough votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. Forty-five Republican senators have pledged to block any nomineeuntil structural changes are made to the Bureau that would undermine its effectiveness.

Polar bears are now being observed by scientists resorting to cannibalism, and expect to see more as Arctic sea ice declines. In “Observations of cannibalism by polar bears (Ursus maritimus) on summer and autumn sea ice at Svalbard, Norway,” published in the journal Arctic, polar bear biologist Ian Stirling and photojournalist Jenny Ross describe seeing three different killings and cannibalism of polar bear cubs by adult males, a known behavioral response to food scarcity. At the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, Ross described the kills, showing her photographs of one of the most gruesome signals of global warming.

A bill to extend the payroll tax holiday failed in the Senate this afternoon after Republicans filibustered the extension for a third time, preventing it from getting the 60 votes needed to begin debate or receive an up-or-down vote. The latest bill would have paid for the extension of the holiday, which primarily affects middle and low income Americans, by assessing a small, temporary tax on the top 0.2 percent of income earners. The vote was 50-48.

Rachelle Grimmer and her two children were astruggling family living in a rundown trailer park. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services denied her application for food stamps, saying that she did not submit enough information. Grimmer went to a welfare office in Laredo to discuss her case.

In an effort to drastically reduce the welfare rolls and make it more difficult for struggling families to receive government benefits, GOP governors and legislators have pushedmandatory drug testing laws. Not only do welfare recipients have to pass drug tests before they can collect benefits, they often have to pay for the test themselves, and will only be reimbursed by the state later if they pass.

The Senate decided last week to keep in place a policy that denies abortion coverage for military rape victims who became pregnant as a result of their sexual assault. Female service members who fight and die for their country are not extended the same rights as civilian government employees, who can use their government-funded insurance to pay for abortion if they’re victims of rape or incest, or evenrape survivors in prison who receive government-funded abortion coverage.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Today, thousands of 99 Percenters will march on K Street in Washington, D.C. as a part of an action called “Take Back The Capitol,” taking aim at the lobbying firms that corporate interests use to influence the federal government.

President Obama yesterday gave a major economic speech in which he took apart the conservative theory of trickle-down economics, the belief that cutting taxes and regulations spurs prosperity at the top of the income scale that then drips down to everyone else. “That theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem:It doesn’t work. It has never worked,” Obama said.

Earlier this afternoon, the Senate voted 54-45 to allow D.C. Circuit nominee Caitlan Halligan’s nomination to move forward — which, in the bizarro universe that is the United States Senate, is six votes shy of what she needs. Worse, this happened despite the fact that her opponents could barely even articulate an argument against her.

In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt gave his rousing “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where he called for new approaches to dealing with the problems the nation faced. President Obama visited Osawatomie today, and in his own speech — his first major economic speech since Occupy Wall Street protests began highlighting income inequality and corporate greed — Obama called for a new approach to addressing America’s current economic challenges.

Today, the Occupy Wall Street movement is taking part in a series of actions they’ve called “Occupy Our Homes,” aimed at preventing foreclosures and protecting those still struggling to keep their homes amidst the lingering effects of the Great Recession. ThinkProgress’ Zaid Jilani explained one of the planned actions here.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO -- Technology bloggers are asking if our cellphones are spying on us after a security researcher said a piece of software hidden on millions of phones was recording virtually everything people do with them.

Under a new policy unveiled late this week by the Walker administration, protesters who apply for permits to protest outside government buildings in Wisconsin may be charged for clean-up costs and the presence of police officers. “Gov. Scott Walker now wants to charge protesters for the time that the police that will monitor them and presumably pepper spray them,” Current TV’s Keith Olbermann observed last night. Watch it:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Tim Townsend attended an anti-Muslim event hosted by ACT! for America this week where he witnessed the following remark. “They’re everywhere,” one woman in the audience whispered to her friend. “They’re like cockroaches.” Townsend concludes, “Unfortunately for American Muslims, we are about to enter a presidential election year, during which groups like ACT! for America and the Clarion Fund have historically spread anti-Islam messages that promote fear of ‘the other.’” As we explained in Fear, Inc., the hate group ACT!, founded by Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel, has a budget of nearly $1 million and comprises over 550 chapters and 170,000 members worldwide.

PolitiFact has just announced its finalists for 2011′s Lie of the Year. Oddly, the year’s most significant policy claim — theDemocrats’ charge that the Paul Ryan budget will end Medicare — made the list, even though it’s 100 percent true!

Last night, every single Republican senator except Susan Collins (ME) voted to protect the top 0.2 percent of taxpayers — just 345,532 millionaires– from paying a small surtax on their income over $ 1 MILLION in order to extend and expand the payroll tax cut for 160 MILLION working Americans.

Friday, December 2, 2011

As allegations of sexual harassment and adultery continue to bog down GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, his campaign is trying to resuscitate his candidacy by launching a new site “Women For Cain.” Chaired by Cain’s wife Gloria, the initiative allows female supports to share their personal stories and, apparently, launch “brutal attacksagainst the women who have accused Cain.” In this section, which TPM reports “appears to be curated by the campaign,” one California supporter tells Mrs. Cain, “don’t pay attention to these pathetic husbandless women who are jealous of women like you in happy long-term marriages,” adding “these vindictive women can’t find a husband or keep one.” Another labels Cain’s accusers as “scheming women that can be swayed by money.” Meanwhile, the photo of the women supporting Cain is a stock photo entitled “four happy young women holding their thumbs up:”

Despite their stated opposition to tax increases, Republican lawmakers have been largely cool or even hostile to a proposed extension of the temporary payroll tax cut, pushed by President Obama and Democrats. Finally, this week, Republicans seemed to relent as GOP congressional leaders publicly urged their caucuses to vote for an extension of the plan. “The fact is that Republicans are doing everything we can to allow American families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn,” Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said this morning of efforts to whip GOP lawmakers to support an extension.

One of the most pernicious practices in which the nation’ biggest banks engaged during the lead up to the financial crisis was pushing minority borrowers into subprime loans, even when many of them qualified for prime loans. Wells Fargo had perhaps the most horrifying practices in this department, calling the subprime loans that they pushed in poor, black neighborhoods “ghetto loans.”

Apple has finally responded to the controversy surrounding Siri, the voice-activated assistant of the iPhone 4s, and its misleading answers to pressing women’s health questions. According to the New York Times, the company said the inability of the program to provide information about abortion clinics was not intentional or deliberate, and “attributed the problem to kinks in the product that were still being ironed out.” But Apple did not address some of the most disturbing complaints that Siri guided women seeking abortions to anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers,” and routinely offered no information about rape centers or emergency contraception. Nor did they offer an explanation for the discrepancy between this lack of information and the readiness with which the program helped people seeking escort services, Viagra, or guns.

Today in Bloomberg Businessweek, Nick Hanauer, a sucessful venture capitalist who has helped launch more than 20 companies, including Amazon.com, writes an op-ed that demolishes the myth that the rich are “job creators” and that we should never raise their taxes.

Tis’ the Season to be jolly, or if you are the American Family Association, to construct a list of aberrant companies out to destroy Christmas. Offering up their yearly “Naughty of Nice” list, the religious-right organization is branding companies according to whether they recognize Christmas enough. If a company uses the term Christmas “on a regular basis, we consider that company Christmas-friendly,” AFA says. If a company “refers to Christmas infrequently, or in a single advertising medium,” then they’re listed as “marginal” and are bordering on delinquency. But if a company uses Christmas “sparingly in a single or unique product description, but as a company, does not recognize it,” then that company is “censoring” (or waging all out war on) Jesus’s birthday. Here is AFA’s list, updated Nov. 30:

While Republicans and Democrats continue to fight over how to reduce America’s debt and deficits — moving from near-government shutdowns to failed super committees and opposition to both spending cuts and tax increases — the government of Belgium may have inadvertently provided Congress with an example of how to fix the problem: do absolutely nothing.

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Simple man, who likes simple things. Who seems to meet some simple people and I don't mean the good simple either. Still, it's fun to meet people who can relate to things behind the wall of the internet. "Sometimes it's best not to see a face only to feel a heart."